Grifols' results evolution has served to reduce tension among investors, who have not fully calmed down since the publication of the Gotham City Research report against the Catalan company in January 2024. The share price of the plasma-derived medicines giant remains far from the levels it held before the attack, but the good performance of its accounts has been enough to question some of the most critical theses regarding its value. Among them, those of some of the short-selling investors who had accumulated positions in the company's capital, and who have been reducing or withdrawing them in recent months.

The president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Chambers, Josep Santacreu, celebrates the definitive endorsement of the Council of Statutory Guarantees (CGE) for the chambers law. The Catalan norm, which will foreseeably reach the Parliament's plenary session at the beginning of the term after a gestation that has lasted more than a decade, passed the examination at the CGE that the Comuns and CUP parliamentary groups requested in mid-July. The left-wing formations asked for a pronouncement from the CGE a few hours after the tense vote in the plenary of the Barcelona Chamber that served to increase the voluntary contribution seats, known as "silver chairs", from the current two to 10. Now the council's endorsement confirms "the legal solidity of the law", in the words of the president.

The tension in the fuel market caused by the war in the Middle East continues to put pressure on consumers' pockets. As confirmed this Thursday by the Spanish government, diesel has become expensive enough during the month of July to reinstate the hydrocarbon tax reduction to 20 cents per liter.

Nvidia, the maker of graphics memory chips that has dominated artificial intelligence in recent years, continues to push the market to grow at a forced pace. As announced in a statement, the most valuable company on the planet has reached an agreement with six of Wall Street's largest financial entities to mobilize $500 billion in investment dedicated to AI infrastructure. In a social media post, its CEO, Jensen Huang, assured that the alliance's objective is to "establish independent financing platforms" to activate the necessary capital to build and launch large-scale AI factories.

The pyrrhic victory of the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, Josep Santacreu, in the vote to expand from two to 10 the vocal positions with the highest voluntary contribution – the so-called silver chairs” – has redefined the composition of the institution's plenary. By reducing the number of elected members by suffrage among the demarcation's entrepreneurs from 52 to 44, regulations require a change in the sectoral distribution of chamber seats.

Earthquake at the helm of Google's artificial intelligence segment. The former CEO of DeepMind, Nobel laureate in chemistry Demis Hassabis, has stepped down from leading the British subsidiary to take charge of leading Alphabet's – the parent company of the well-known internet search engine – long-term scientific research. Hassabis relinquishes executive functions at DeepMind, Mountain View's first major bet on AI, but assumes its presidency. In a corporate statement, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that the move aims to "accelerate the work done and maintain focus on the frontier of artificial intelligence".

The College of Real Estate Agents (COAPI) of Barcelona has appointed Guifré Homedes as the new representative to the plenary session of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona. Homedes, second vice-president of the institution and general director of Amat Immobiliaris, will replace the previous member, Vicenç Hernández Reche, who was removed in the last plenary session, held on July 16. The appointment was formalized last Monday, August 3, with the completion of the necessary procedures before the Chamber. He will therefore be able to participate in the first meeting of the governing body after the summer, scheduled for September 30.

SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, has registered revenues of 7.8 billion dollars during the second quarter of this year, 92% more than during the same period last year. This Tuesday's announcement was widely expected by the markets, as it is the first earnings report as a publicly traded company. On June 12, the aerospace company made the leap to Wall Street on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX.

The Ibex-35, the main Spanish stock market index, broke the 20,000-point barrier for the first time this Tuesday. The index of the country's large companies thus culminates the chain of records it has been linking throughout 2026. At the close of the session, it only needed a moderate acceleration – of 0.21%, already outside of trading hours – to rise above historic highs and end the day above 20,023 points.

The extraordinary regularization of foreigners promoted by the Spanish government has added 46,839 affiliates to Social Security in Catalonia since the process began in April. This is according to the latest monthly report from the Ministry of Social Security, headed by Elma Saiz. Across the State, the increase in affiliates linked to the regularization exceeded 262,400 people by July 30 – the latest date for which data is available. Of these, 81.5% were in the general regime, while only 4.8% are registered as self-employed.

The Minister of Business and Labor of the Generalitat, Miquel Sàmper, boasted last week about an achievement that seems unimaginable not only from Catalonia, but from anywhere in Europe: "We are at a similar level to the United States or China" in the development of deep technology, he assured. This is the quantum industry, one that seems to be part of futuristic fiction, but which is already doing business in the Principality.

The euphoria that followed the stock market debut of SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace and artificial intelligence giant, has completely deflated. The company, which staged the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history on June 12, has seen its value plummet in recent weeks. The IPO price, it should be recalled, was set at $135 per share, and within just a few days, it soared to over $200. However, by Friday, the tech company was trading around $115, leaving all its investors in the red.

An important part of the costs that companies assume to improve salaries in line with inflation is not reaching the pockets of workers. This is how the Catalan employers' association for small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, details it in a report published this Thursday dedicated to the so-called "fiscal drag, or progressivity in the cold. It is the dysfunction that arises when salary increases associated with price increases do not have a fiscal replica in the form of IRPF deflation. "A perversion occurs, and that is that we raise salaries, but this does not translate into more purchasing power," denounced the president of the business association, Antoni Cañete.

An artificial intelligence model from OpenAI, the North American multinational creator of ChatGPT, caused an "unprecedented incident" in global cybersecurity. As the company acknowledged in a statement, one of its training models broke free from its limitations and attacked Hugging Face, a company also dedicated to AI.

Catalonia aims to make the definitive leap into the market in the quantum industry. After years focused on "generating knowledge," in the words of the Secretary of Digital Policies of the Generalitat, Maria Galindo, the country is experiencing a moment of "quantum effervescence" that allows it to aspire to compete with international powers. According to a sectoral report prepared by Acció, the agency for business growth of the Department of Business and Labour, this industry invoiced 91.4 million euros in 2024 – the last year with definitive data; a limited figure, but one that the sector celebrates within the framework of still incipient deep technology.

In mid-June, United States President Donald Trump issued an order that seemed unthinkable: after weeks of tensions with Anthropic, the company that created the artificial intelligence model Claude, the Oval Office forced them to close their most advanced tools, Mythos and Fable, to any user who was not North American. Although the blockade has already been resolved, experts and markets are still trembling: Trump then demonstrated that he has his finger on the "on and off switch" for global technologies, comments Miquel Martí, executive director of Tech Barcelona. The temporary detention at Anthropic was irrefutable proof of the evidence that Europe, like so many other international players, does not control its digital and technological future, nor its present.

News at various levels in the Catalan wine sector. Just weeks after the renewal of the presidency of the Regulatory Council of Cava, which placed Marta Vidal at the head of the designation of origin (DO) of Spanish sparkling wines, the employers' association of producers will have to change its president. The direction of Barcelona Wine Week, the main wine event in the country's capital, is also being reshaped. Outside the vineyard, PepsiCo is undertaking an appointment in its human resources department, and Ikea in Spain seeks to build "an increasingly relevant, close, and accessible brand".

The plenary session of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, meeting this Thursday, has narrowly approved the reform proposed by the executive committee to expand from two to ten the paid vocal seats granted by greater voluntary contribution, the so-called silver chairs. The body was completely divided in the session, with a tie of 29 votes in favor of the measure and 29 against. The decision was unblocked by the casting vote of the president, Josep Santacreu.

The housing crisis is also a drag on business growth. This is according to a report prepared by the SME Observatory of the Catalan employers' association of small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, which indicates that one out of every two businesses in the country has renounced applying growth measures – from expanding staff to opening new production centers – due to the residential pressure suffered by both the company and the workers.

The executive of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, led by president Josep Santacreu, is nearing the end of its term with a burning issue. The highest governing body of the public law corporation announced an agreement last week to increase the number of voluntary economic contribution memberships, known as "silver chairs", from the current two to ten. The proposal, which Santacreu himself had considered since his victory in the 2023 chamber elections, has notable support within the plenary but also a significant number of detractors. The final say will lie with the entity's plenary, which will meet next Thursday and, according to sources consulted by ARA, there is currently no certainty about the outcome of the vote.